Instant Erudition with Jo Dyer
Instant
Erudition is the Shot’s new fortnightly column: a quick read from Jo
Dyer to whet your whistle while you wait for our next feature article
And it is with this reeling wreck of a country that we have thrown in our military lot. In a book out this week, Nuked: The Submarine Fiasco that Sank Australia’s Sovereignty, Andrew Fowler takes us back through the duplicitous disaster of AUKUS in all its devastating detail: from the opportunity for a new independent geo-political strategy the submarine deal with France offered, to the all-the-way-with-USA China hawks in Defence who immediately worked to undermine it. From the ongoing uncertainty as to when – even if – we’ll ever get nuclear subs from the massively overstretched US construction yards we’re now underwriting to the fact we don’t have the technical capacity to operate them if we do; from the proliferation of ex-US military men who pocketed large amounts of Australian taxpayers’ cash to provide advice on Australia’s best interests to their advice spookily aligning with the interests of their home country and that of the weapons manufacturers on whose Boards they sit. From the transparently political games Morrison played with our national security as he obsequiously cleaved us to the US while hoping to blindside a resurgent Labor with a khaki-tinged campaign, to the craven capitulation of the ALP who embraced AUKUS within 24 hours of its announcement, its privileging of old Anglophonic allies and an anti-China military strategy a price they elected to pay to avoid being wedged in a tight political race, regardless of the ultimate cost to them, to us and the country.
The catastrophic state of the United States
Bill Shorten told parliament on Tuesday (2-7-24) that $billions of National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) spending is being rorted on things such as “strata fees, fines, steam rooms, gambling, legal cannabis, cruises, […]
Bill Shorten managed NDIS has fraudulent spending of at least $5.5 billion a year on sex toys, gambling and cannabis etc
Overall it was a spectacular night for Labour, with the party winning a landslide victory.However, in areas with a high proportion of Muslim voters the party performed badly.
Pro-Gaza candidates in UK squeeze Labour vote in some constituencies
The Lib Dems burgeoned in terms of representatives, gaining a record number of MPs (they now stand at 72), despite only having a vote share of 12.2%. It was a modest percentage hardly different from the 2019 election.
Reform UK, Farage’s rebranded party of Brexiteers, had every right to feel characteristically foiled by the first past the post system that is always defended by the party that wins majority, leaving smaller contenders to chew over its stunningly unrepresentative rationale. Having netted a higher percentage than the Lib Dems at 14.3% (over 4 million votes), they had only five MPs to show for it. “That is blatantly not a properly functioning democratic system – that is a flawed system,” a resentful Richard Tice of Reform remarked on BBC 4 Radio’s Today program. “The demands for change will grow and grow.”
The Greens, similarly, received 6.7% of the vote (just under 2 million), but returned a mere four MPs to Westminster. Despite this, the strategists will be seeing these wins, the most successful in their party’s history, as stunning, bettering the heroic if lonely exploits of Caroline Lucas. Tellingly, the party pinched two seats off Labour, and one from the Conservative stable.
Given that Labour proved the largest beneficiary of a voting system that should only ever apply in a two-way contest and given the prospect of Reform and the Greens posing ever greater threats from either wing of politics, appetite for electoral reform is likely to be suppressed.
No comments:
Post a Comment